The best part is that the restaurant owners also expect you to have full availability and will not offer a set schedule so that from week to week you have no idea what your hours will be, but missing a single shift means being fired.

So good luck getting a second part-time shiat job to make ends meet, because neither will offer you enough to live on but both expect to lay full claim to any of your time as they see fit.

So when does the government start calculating benefit recipients as full-time-equivalents (35 hour weeks worked) for the purpose of fining employers? Employers turning full-time jobs into part time ones should get their comeuppance.

Simple fix for the law - Mandated health care requirement based off total employee hours worked, regardless of how many hours any individual employee works. So whether you have 50 employees working 30 hours a week or 75 employees working 20 per week, you still have to cough up health care contributions.

Lost Thought 00:Simple fix for the law - Mandated health care requirement based off total employee hours worked, regardless of how many hours any individual employee works. So whether you have 50 employees working 30 hours a week or 75 employees working 20 per week, you still have to cough up health care contributions.

How about health insurance that is actual insurance? Nobody files a car insurance claim to get the oil changed. The same should be for medical.

Lexx:So when does the government start calculating benefit recipients as full-time-equivalents (35 hour weeks worked) for the purpose of fining employers? Employers turning full-time jobs into part time ones should get their comeuppance.

TFA says 30 hours a week is full-time for Healthcare under Obamacare. So, employers will just knock down employee's hours to 25 hours a week. They save 5 whole hours of pay AND skip playing into healthcare.

Not an Ayn Rand fan by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems to me that the people most in favor of her economic philosophy overlook the tiny little line about 'not sacrificing yourself for others, nor sacrificing others for yourself' bit when they put it into practice.

RoyFokker'sGhost:Lexx: So when does the government start calculating benefit recipients as full-time-equivalents (35 hour weeks worked) for the purpose of fining employers? Employers turning full-time jobs into part time ones should get their comeuppance.

TFA says 30 hours a week is full-time for Healthcare under Obamacare. So, employers will just knock down employee's hours to 25 hours a week. They save 5 whole hours of pay AND skip playing into healthcare.

Not an Ayn Rand fan by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems to me that the people most in favor of her economic philosophy overlook the tiny little line about 'not sacrificing yourself for others, nor sacrificing others for yourself' bit when they put it into practice.

I'm saying that the government should start counting full-time equivalents,not full-time-employees. For example, 100 employees at 30 hours a week should count the same as 200 employees at 15 hours a week, for the purposes of health-care contributions.

Smeggy Smurf:Lost Thought 00: Simple fix for the law - Mandated health care requirement based off total employee hours worked, regardless of how many hours any individual employee works. So whether you have 50 employees working 30 hours a week or 75 employees working 20 per week, you still have to cough up health care contributions.

How about health insurance that is actual insurance? Nobody files a car insurance claim to get the oil changed. The same should be for medical.

I was aiming for a relatively minor update, not a systematic overhaul.

Smeggy Smurf:Lost Thought 00: Simple fix for the law - Mandated health care requirement based off total employee hours worked, regardless of how many hours any individual employee works. So whether you have 50 employees working 30 hours a week or 75 employees working 20 per week, you still have to cough up health care contributions.

How about health insurance that is actual insurance? Nobody files a car insurance claim to get the oil changed. The same should be for medical.

The problem there being the human "oil changes" can prevent medical costs that make a new car look cheap.

Lost Thought 00:Simple fix for the law - Mandated health care requirement based off total employee hours worked, regardless of how many hours any individual employee works. So whether you have 50 employees working 30 hours a week or 75 employees working 20 per week, you still have to cough up health care contributions.

And the employers would respond by laying off as many slaves employees as necessary to get under the threshold set by that regulation. So the guy who's got 70 employees working 20 hours a week won't have to give them even the most cursory of benefits beyond minimum wage, and we're back to square one where bosses are doing everything in their power to give their employees as little as possible.

12349876:Smeggy Smurf: Lost Thought 00: Simple fix for the law - Mandated health care requirement based off total employee hours worked, regardless of how many hours any individual employee works. So whether you have 50 employees working 30 hours a week or 75 employees working 20 per week, you still have to cough up health care contributions.

How about health insurance that is actual insurance? Nobody files a car insurance claim to get the oil changed. The same should be for medical.

The problem there being the human "oil changes" can prevent medical costs that make a new car look cheap.

medical insurance is like a combo of insurance and a service plan.

I have a service plan on my car that covers routine maitenance for 4 years (like oil changes). I also have car insurance, that covers me if its stolen, hit with things, etc.

I have medical insurance that covers routine maitenance (yearly checkups) plus insurance than covers if I get sick (appendicitis).

And Twinkees are smaller because no more high costs of unionized labor to make them and thats makes more profit or something.http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/15/twinkies-rele a se-smaller/2517709/

Sometimes I wish I could just slap people and say, "WHAT DID YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN!?"

Full-time employees are *very* marginally more efficient than part-timers....you have fewer staff to train, fewer staff to manage, less turn-over, less 'new guys'. 12 people working 40 hours is, generally, better than 16 people working 30. Which is why we ended up with full-time jobs being the norm.

But when you're flipping burgers, seating customers, sweeping the floor - there just isn't *that* much of a difference.

Now, introduce some law that introduces HUGE incentives to avoid having too many 'full-timers' - where full-time is '30 hours or more'. What do you think is going to happen? Free markets attempt to maximize efficiency - and paying lots of extra fees and taxes for *tiny* improvement in your staff....well, that's not efficient. So - of course, companies are going to shift towards employing lots of 25-29 hour per week staff.

And I can't fathom why anyone, much less our intelligent, educated, economic leaders who pass these laws and designed this health care system couldn't see this coming from 100,000 miles away.

Imagine if the government put a tax on Hard-drives bigger than 500gigs. Immediately, any drive over 500gigs came with a $300 'probably a pirate' fee. What would you do? Would you buy a new 1TB drive and pay an additional $300 - or would you buy two 500gig drives for a fraction of the cost? Or invest in a NAS for your home storage needs? Or pay a few dollars for cloud storage? Any sane person would consider the additional cost in their purchasing decisions.

In a more positive light - it will mean more jobs. So, if you are so inclined, you can spin it into a positive. You can talk about how we're adding Health Care (YAY!) and decreasing unemployment (YAY!) ...but really, this was exactly what everyone should have known and expected would happen. What pisses me off is I have friends who were REALLY supporting 'Obama's Health Care Bill' who, apparently, knew absolutely nothing about it. And now that they are hearing details of it's implementation that they don't like; they're raging *at the companies* who are acting exactly like any rational being would.

These same people will do everything in their power to minimize their tax burden. They deduct their student loan interest (and cry for loan forgiveness). They jump through hoops for 1st time home-buyer freebies. They claim tax-credits for getting energy efficient crap.

But when a COMPANY complies with tax law - the company is evil! How dare they!

King Something:Lost Thought 00: Simple fix for the law - Mandated health care requirement based off total employee hours worked, regardless of how many hours any individual employee works. So whether you have 50 employees working 30 hours a week or 75 employees working 20 per week, you still have to cough up health care contributions.

And the employers would respond by laying off as many slaves employees as necessary to get under the threshold set by that regulation. So the guy who's got 70 employees working 20 hours a week won't have to give them even the most cursory of benefits beyond minimum wage, and we're back to square one where bosses are doing everything in their power to give their employees as little as possible.

If they could do the same business by laying off employees, I'm pretty sure most of these places already would. The employers will have to decide if losing profit is worth ducking the fines, which is a much harder calculation for them to do than they currently have to make.

Fark_Guy_Rob:But when a COMPANY complies with tax law - the company is evil! How dare they!

The companies are screwing people over. It matters not the reason, they're the ones screwing people over, they get the hate. If they'd actually give a shiat about employees, treat them like humans instead of chattel or replaceable cogs, we wouldn't even be having this discussion in the first place.

You know... I want to biatch about the Job Creators (TM) because they have a very heavy hand in this trend but....

.... another BIG part of the problem here is us. As long as consumers continue to demand nothing from their consumption but the maximum quantity of product at the minimum possible price this is going to continue to happen. Wal Mart doesn't only pay shiat wages to a skeleton staff to maximize profits and shareholder benefits, it also does that to keep costs as low as possible so it can sell products at the lowest price it possibly can.

Yea, fat cats screwing people over on their basic healthcare just so they can buy another ivory butt scratcher is part of the problem, but as long as we live in a society where the rest of us demand that prices constantly fall we also hold a considerable chunk of the blame for the plight of the "service class".

Fark_Guy_Rob:And I can't fathom why anyone, much less our intelligent, educated, economic leaders who pass these laws and designed this health care system couldn't see this coming from 100,000 miles away.

Lexx:RoyFokker'sGhost: Lexx: So when does the government start calculating benefit recipients as full-time-equivalents (35 hour weeks worked) for the purpose of fining employers? Employers turning full-time jobs into part time ones should get their comeuppance.

TFA says 30 hours a week is full-time for Healthcare under Obamacare. So, employers will just knock down employee's hours to 25 hours a week. They save 5 whole hours of pay AND skip playing into healthcare.

Not an Ayn Rand fan by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems to me that the people most in favor of her economic philosophy overlook the tiny little line about 'not sacrificing yourself for others, nor sacrificing others for yourself' bit when they put it into practice.

I'm saying that the government should start counting full-time equivalents,not full-time-employees. For example, 100 employees at 30 hours a week should count the same as 200 employees at 15 hours a week, for the purposes of health-care contributions.

skozlaw:.... another BIG part of the problem here is us. As long as consumers continue to demand nothing from their consumption but the maximum quantity of product at the minimum possible price this is going to continue to happen. Wal Mart doesn't only pay shiat wages to a skeleton staff to maximize profits and shareholder benefits, it also does that to keep costs as low as possible so it can sell products at the lowest price it possibly can.

I disagree that those two things are related. Costco doesn't pay shiat wages, but it somehow manages to offer maximum quantity at minimum price.No, it's still the corporate culture that values shareholders above all else. It's ultimately unsustainable when the company values non-producers more than actual employees. The company, the employee, and the consumer should all come before the shareholder, because without any one of those three things, the shareholder has nothing.

Fark_Guy_Rob: I have friends who were REALLY supporting 'Obama's Health Care Bill' who....

I guess your friends did not just assume that businesses will find every mathematical equation to beat a societal expectation. Luckily this fix is easy though unlikely to be repaired. Like another poster said above...

- Remove the stupid X People at Y Hours equation.- Make the threshold TOTAL FTE equivalent hours. Then the business can not rig its employment pool. If they hire or utilize (temp contracts) XXX Hours of Employee time, they have to contribute.

Universal Health Insurance makes sense on so many levels.

Now to just make it work in a land where Corporations are People and People (like Monsanto) can write laws that say they can't be sued.

Lost Thought 00:King Something: Lost Thought 00: Simple fix for the law - Mandated health care requirement based off total employee hours worked, regardless of how many hours any individual employee works. So whether you have 50 employees working 30 hours a week or 75 employees working 20 per week, you still have to cough up health care contributions.

And the employers would respond by laying off as many slaves employees as necessary to get under the threshold set by that regulation. So the guy who's got 70 employees working 20 hours a week won't have to give them even the most cursory of benefits beyond minimum wage, and we're back to square one where bosses are doing everything in their power to give their employees as little as possible.

If they could do the same business by laying off employees, I'm pretty sure most of these places already would. The employers will have to decide if losing profit is worth ducking the fines, which is a much harder calculation for them to do than they currently have to make.

They'd make that calculation easier by deciding whether or not the slight loss in profit from sacking a handful of workers is worth the money saved by not being required to spend a dime on the remaining workers' health care, or if the slight loss in profit from sacking a handful of workers is worth denying the remaining workers health care just to spite them.

Given the corporate culture in America of "Quarterly Profits Uber Alles", it would probably take about 5 seconds or less for the employer to decide that taking a slight hit in productivity is worth the trouble since they can just tell the stockholders that they've successfully undertaken a cost-cutting measure and any money lost from layoffs is more than offset by the increase in stock prices.

skozlaw:.... another BIG part of the problem here is us. As long as consumers continue to demand nothing from their consumption but the maximum quantity of product at the minimum possible price this is going to continue to happen. Wal Mart doesn't only pay shiat wages to a skeleton staff to maximize profits and shareholder benefits, it also does that to keep costs as low as possible so it can sell products at the lowest price it possibly can.

I was in a WalMart a few months back, and as usual there were long lines and many dormant registers. Some guy starts beaking off at a $12/hour supervisor who happened to be passing. Guy says something along the lines of "we have rights, you should open more tills", etc. Supervisor just stood there trying to appease the guy who just kept repeating about rights and stuff. After about 45 seconds of this, I butted in with "this is a consequence of our desire to pay the absolute minimum for our goods". He responds to me with something about "rights" again, and I replied back "Yes, you do have rights. You have the right to leave your cart there, and go up to the nearest IGA. You'll be paying 30% more, but you'll be able to get to a cashier in under three minutes."

An angry look from the guy before he turned away, a few smiling nods from other customers (who were probably annoyed with this guy), and a bewildered look from the supervisor.

This is a good thing. We should be transitioning to a part time labor economy. Automation relieves the demand for human labor. This in turn either creates high unemployment or shorter work weeks. I for one would rather see a world with everyone working 30 hours than with 3/4 of the people working 40 and 1/4 not working at all. What we need to do is to change our paradigms and stop seeing 30 hour weeks as "part time." Why not call 40 hour weeks overtime instead? Give people mandated benefits at 30 hours and time and a half for everything over that. What unemployment problem? It would drop to 2% overnight.

Tommy Moo:This is a good thing. We should be transitioning to a part time labor economy. Automation relieves the demand for human labor. This in turn either creates high unemployment or shorter work weeks. I for one would rather see a world with everyone working 30 hours than with 3/4 of the people working 40 and 1/4 not working at all. What we need to do is to change our paradigms and stop seeing 30 hour weeks as "part time." Why not call 40 hour weeks overtime instead? Give people mandated benefits at 30 hours and time and a half for everything over that. What unemployment problem? It would drop to 2% overnight.

Because you're lazy and deserve to be poor if you're not working 80 hours a week.

12349876:Smeggy Smurf: Lost Thought 00: Simple fix for the law - Mandated health care requirement based off total employee hours worked, regardless of how many hours any individual employee works. So whether you have 50 employees working 30 hours a week or 75 employees working 20 per week, you still have to cough up health care contributions.

How about health insurance that is actual insurance? Nobody files a car insurance claim to get the oil changed. The same should be for medical.

The problem there being the human "oil changes" can prevent medical costs that make a new car look cheap.

You can afford them if your premiums aren't insanely high. $300+ a month for a healthy mid 30's woman because she has to be covered for pregnancy even though she's fixed is farking insane.

Lost Thought 00:Simple fix for the law - Mandated health care requirement based off total employee hours worked, regardless of how many hours any individual employee works. So whether you have 50 employees working 30 hours a week or 75 employees working 20 per week, you still have to cough up health care contributions.

Tommy Moo:This is a good thing. We should be transitioning to a part time labor economy. Automation relieves the demand for human labor. This in turn either creates high unemployment or shorter work weeks. I for one would rather see a world with everyone working 30 hours than with 3/4 of the people working 40 and 1/4 not working at all. What we need to do is to change our paradigms and stop seeing 30 hour weeks as "part time." Why not call 40 hour weeks overtime instead? Give people mandated benefits at 30 hours and time and a half for everything over that. What unemployment problem? It would drop to 2% overnight.

The French tried this. It did not work.

King Something:Given the corporate culture in America of "Quarterly Profits Uber Alles", it would probably take about 5 seconds or less for the employer to decide that taking a slight hit in productivity is worth the trouble since they can just tell the stockholders that they've successfully undertaken a cost-cutting measure and any money lost from layoffs is more than offset by the increase in stock prices.

/or they'll simply act out of spite

Business do not act out of spite, unless it is profitable. You are correct that in the short term they may make that decision. However, they would be unable to expand or grow their business without subjecting themselves to the tax. This is a sufficient motivator that I believe most of them will suck it up and pay the tax when they are ready to expand their business

Sergeant Grumbles:Fark_Guy_Rob: But when a COMPANY complies with tax law - the company is evil! How dare they!

The companies are screwing people over. It matters not the reason, they're the ones screwing people over, they get the hate. If they'd actually give a shiat about employees, treat them like humans instead of chattel or replaceable cogs, we wouldn't even be having this discussion in the first place.

Then abolish all taxes and laws and let people act like 'human beings'.

But, in our society, we have laws. And we're expected to follow them. The laws are supposed to be made by experts. They are supposed to make sense.

We have laws regarding taxes to prevent people from taking advantage of the system. Following the system, by definition, isn't taking advantage. And while we could talk about 'loopholes' - this isn't a loophole. This is plain-as-day obvious consequence of the law.

Lost Thought 00:Tommy Moo: This is a good thing. We should be transitioning to a part time labor economy. Automation relieves the demand for human labor. This in turn either creates high unemployment or shorter work weeks. I for one would rather see a world with everyone working 30 hours than with 3/4 of the people working 40 and 1/4 not working at all. What we need to do is to change our paradigms and stop seeing 30 hour weeks as "part time." Why not call 40 hour weeks overtime instead? Give people mandated benefits at 30 hours and time and a half for everything over that. What unemployment problem? It would drop to 2% overnight.